Tien Gow

Tien Gow or Tin Kau (Chinese: 天九; pinyin: tiān jiǔ; Jyutping: tin1 gau2; lit.

[1] The highly idiosyncratic and culture-specific suit-system of these games is likely the conceptual origin of suits, an idea that later is used for playing cards.

Throwing Heaven and Nine (掷天九), or Kwat-P'ai (骨牌)[a] as reported by Ng Kwai-shang in 1886,[2] is a game of chance where players try to beat each other with a higher combination from a pair of Chinese dice with red 1 and 4 pips.

Otherwise, the first player takes both tiles; this mechanic is analogous to the card game War but with an added requirement to follow suit.

Players that are unable to beat the trick discard their tiles face down (this is characteristic of some trumpless trick-taking games like Madiao and Ganjifa).

In triple and quadruple tricks these are the only valid combinations: Heavens and Nines; Earths and Eights; Mankinds and Sevens; Harmonies and Fives Triple tricks have a rule that a triplet consisting of two civil and one military tiles can only be beaten by a triplet consisting of the same suit compositions.

In his article Chinese Origin of Playing Cards published in 1895, Sir William Henry Wilkinson pointed out that the game of Tien Gow was invented long before Song dynasty, but was standardized in 1120:[10] [Quote from page 66.

It is perfectly clear, indeed, that all that was done or asked for in 1120 was an imperial decision as to which of several forms or interpretations of the game now known as T'ien-kiu ("Heavens and Nines") was to be considered orthodox.

1120 AD], a certain official memorialized the throne, praying that the ya p'ai (ivory cards [牙牌]) be fixed as a pack of 32, comprising 127 pips [sic, it should be 227, but Chinese printers are careless], in order to accord with the expanse of the stars and constellations.

Ming author Xie Zhaozhe (1567–1624) also records the legend of dominoes having been presented to Emperor Huizong but in the year 1112.

The Ming sources may be early by half a century as Li Qingzhao (1084 – c. 1155) made no mention of dominoes in her compendium of games.

[11] The partition game of Pai Gow borrows most of its tile ranking from the pairings in Playing Heaven and Nine.

[12] However, the suits have been merged into a single sequence: Below these are unlisted pairs that use modular arithmetic like in Tau Gnau or baccarat.